It’s never too late to steal Marl’s characters and play as them.
Outstanding Citizen/Goon - For the players who excelled their team despite having only their voice and vote. This cannot be awarded to players in mountanous or mountainous-lite games.
Outstanding Even Night CPR Doctor – For the players who excelled in their team despite having the ability to, every other night starting night 2, kill another player if and only if nobody else tried to kill them.
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CPR DOCTOR
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C-P-R
It can save a liife
C-P-R
At day or niiight
C-P-R
Get rough and looow
C-P-R
Before they gooooo
CPR stands for
mediCal
malPRactice
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This is the best post and the best suggestion on FoL this year.
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Maybe the standards being applied to nominations are too high. What I mean by that is, maybe we don’t nominate some people who could deserve a nomination for above-average play simply because we don’t think it was standout enough, even though it could be standout by our site’s standards. Let’s face it, town doesn’t often win here (and I’m the guy with a 100% FoL winrate as town last year, yes I am quite surprised this is the case), so maybe just being a good villager should be rewarded, even if you didn’t carry the game? Similarly, perhaps higher standards should be applied to wolves?
I agree that an especially standout collective town performance would destroy the category, but in the absence of one, at least we would have more nominations if we approached making them in this way. I feel like if you follow my logic here, then villages might start getting nominated just because they were able to win, but… if the wolf winrate this year turns out overwhelming, the rare cases of town winning might genuinely be worth nominating.
I think context is important and I do believe we might be a bit too hesitant to nominate. The worst-case scenario is that a nomination does not get a second, but there is no genuine downside to making one. I’m not saying “spam noms after every game that finishes,” I’m saying “don’t just nominate people who obviously carried the game, if those even exist.”
This is also an interesting concept which I believe to be connected to an inherent flaw of how we perceive good play. I talked about it before in various places, but I don’t think I ever actually posted about this on FoL.
How good play is generally perceived is that a player did two of the following things: highpost, carry, win. If a player did two of these, they are likely to be nominated, or at least considered by some people to be nominated. I am excluding 3ps from this list because it becomes case-dependent in their situation.
“But Vulgard, highposting and winning doesn’t mean you contributed to the victory!” It usually does, and even if not… highposting is definitely considered towny when town do it, and impressive when mafia do it, both of which are positive things. You can just spam the thread and highpost this way without adding much, that’s definitely something that can happen, so it’s not a 100% truth - but that is why I said “generally.” In most cases, this short list does apply.
Now, why is that a problem? To be honest, I completely understand why it’s like this. If you highpost, you’re clearly invested in the game. If you’re invested, you’re seen as making more of an impact, and you typically do make more of an impact. You might even openly carry in the process, by making smart plays/posting well as a wolf or by killing wolves as a villager. In that case, the nomination is basically secured. And even if you don’t carry, you get an invisible “you tried!” sticker, and that effort is more likely to be recognized.
But of course, when those players exist in a game, they distract from everyone else. People who might’ve contributed a lot themselves - their actions just don’t get scrutinized as much because they were not in the spotlight. Most people, if not everyone on FoL, don’t read every game and every ISO. It’s simply not possible if you have any commitments outside of mafia. And as such, potential nominations drift away. There could’ve been someone whose postcount was in the middle of the pack and who was nightkilled in the middle of the game, therefore not standing out as an early fearkill or as a major thread pusher. However, that someone could’ve been the closest to the solve, or they could’ve made an important mechanical play, or they could’ve helped figure out something important, or they could’ve helped orient a louder player’s reads in a significant way. All of these things matter, but it can be difficult to notice them without really analyzing a game.
On the flipside, in regard to wolves, a wolf can die early and still play an important role for the team. (Being able to get bussed well is a skill, for example!) Alternatively, a wolf could’ve been the major wolfchat contributor, planning out mechanical actions and working out in-thread strategies. I genuinely don’t remember the last instance of something like that being recognized. (And no, in case you might think I’m talking about myself, I am not.) But it makes sense for such a thing not to get recognized. You would have to read the wolfchat to even know this person did a lot of planning, and not that many people enter wolfchats after a game ends. Among those people, there are also many who only come in there to do some form of vanity searching. Which is understandable… but which makes it difficult to ensure that everything “worthy” of a nomination is indeed nominated.
So, the bottom line is, I think potentially deserving nominations aren’t made partly because our standards are too high relative to the site’s gameplay context (how often town wins vs how often wolves win, what is the average town player’s performance, etc.), and partly because a lot of candidates get overlooked due to people not reading the game thoroughly (which I completely understand, but which is still true from my point of view).
How would I fix this? Frankly, I think it’s a good idea for a game’s host to offer post-game insights about performances of specific players that stood out to them in some way, such as what I’ve seen Proph do after his games. The host is usually going to pay enough attention to be able to speak about standouts in their games. That said, expecting that from every host could be considered inconvenient, which is something I recognize. I also can’t tell everyone on the site to thoroughly read every game from a nomination perspective, so without that as an option…
I don’t know. Someone would have to read these games to increase the odds of unsung heroes being recognized, so to speak. But deep-reading a mafia game is a difficult task, especially if the game has a lot of posts/mechanics/other aspects. I don’t have an idea better than “as a host, try to present your take on the game after it finishes, because you probably understood what happened the best.” That could lead to more nominations being made, because people will understand each game a bit better and might even want to do their own research out of curiosity.
Maybe someone has something better. I don’t think this idea is flawless, and I even included a counterpoint to it already. But hey, it’s an idea.
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that’s basically my old paper plate awards but as I’ve had less time and the activity in my games has exploded (because activity on the site in general has exploded) it’s been basically impossible to keep up in a meaningful fashion
Interesting argument
However
I am illiterate
Genuinely extremely challenging
Especially cause it requires the hosts to not have their head up their ass
My solution considers that people are on average not particularly insightful unless they are given a prompt to look at something a specific way
It’s not that there aren’t insightful people
It’s just that it needs to be coaxed out of them
I’m aware. That said, it is the host(s) that should have consistently the most complete perspective of their games.
That’s the problem with what I’m suggesting, yeah.